Nascent
by kenzimone
Summary: The one thing he will never get used to is stumbling into his apartment at three AM after a long shift and finding someone awake and waiting for him. ['Post Mortem' sequel] [MohinderClaire]


**Title**: Nascent**  
Author**: kenzimone**  
Disclaimer**: Don't own.**  
Rating**: R**  
Summary**: The one thing he will never get used to is stumbling into his apartment at three AM after a long shift and finding someone awake and waiting for him. Mohinder/Claire**  
Note**: This is a sequel to _Post-Mortem_, which I recommend reading first to avoid confusion about the little AU !verse both of these fics belong to. Thanks to the awesome pyroblaze18 for the speedy beta!

* * *

The one thing he will never get used to is stumbling into his apartment at three AM after a long shift and finding someone awake and waiting for him. After five weeks, Claire seems to have her internal alarm clock tuned into his comings and goings, and it doesn't matter how quiet Mohinder tries to be as he slowly slides the key into the lock and opens and closes the door after him; when he turns, she's always awake.

In the beginning, she would be standing by the ratty old couch, light shining in through the windows painting her softly golden, and silently help him slide his jacket off his shoulders. At this hour, all he ever wants to do is sleep, and so she has prepared a make shift bed of the old couch, one that wasn't there when he left, and returns to bed as he sinks down onto the couch seats and lets himself drift away.

There's really nothing for her to _do_ in New York; dreams of men in dark clothes and sunglasses haunt her weeks after the chase across the airport, and they leave her staring wistfully out the windows towards the alley below, yet too afraid to step foot outside.

She spends most of her time puttering about the small apartment, tidying up after what he has flip flopped between telling her was a botched assassination attempt and a burglary gone wrong – he doesn't want her feeling unsafe in the one safe haven she has, but he's even more against lying to her. She's had enough of that in her life.

...

It takes her two weeks to convince him to sleep in the same bed as her – the couch is small, and he is not, as she puts it. He protests and lies through his teeth, but the following nights he finds the couch unmade and as cluttered with books and clothes as when he left. Claire has waited for him at the door, and now she guides him to the bed; he allows himself to be laid out on top of the covers, refusing any help in undressing, and only permits himself to remove his shoes as she slides beneath the covers on the side of the bed facing the windows.

At times Mohinder will be awoken by soft cries and gasps as she is roused out of sleep by something unseen, and those are the moments when he never quite knows how to act. With the scratchy couch cushions chafing against his back, he had simply held his breath and waited to hear the sound of her turning over and for her breathing to even out in the rhythmic pattern of sleep.

Now he is at a loss, because she's mer1e inches away, body trembling with adrenaline born out of fear, and he simply does not know what to do. By the time he's decided to reach out and gently touch her shoulder, she is already calm and once again asleep, eyes twitching beneath pale eyelids. He shuts his eyes too, and doesn't realize that he's left his hand covering her skin until he awakens in the morning and finds it still there.

...

He decides to not waste any time, and shows her the Map as soon as she's ready. It fascinates her from the beginning; with wide eyes she takes it all in, fingertips tracing borders and mountain ranges and names of places she's never heard of before. She spends an hour reading the notes and Post-Its littering the paper, and followed the strings spanning from Sweden to Ethiopia to Japan to Colombia and New York city itself. And the pins – pins, pins, and more pins, she goes through them all, murmuring names of strange cities in a halting tongue.

Once Mohinder explains to her the thought behind it – special people, people like her – the first thing Claire does is gently remove the red pin marking Odessa, Texas, and inserting it right into the heart of New York city. And then she smiles, and Mohinder finds himself unable to refuse the silent request to join her.

...

After four days of patiently waiting for him to come home and then making sure he doesn't make a bed for himself on the couch, she doesn't bother getting out of bed anymore. She's still awake though, when he returns home, but trusts him not to go against her wishes. She's trained him well, Mohinder thinks and sinks down on his side of the bed – it's a strange thought, how his bed is now theirs. She slides his jacket off his shoulders and tosses it across to room towards the couch; he can hear it hit the floor several feet short.

Three full weeks after she first came to him, he says nothing as she slips close and rests her head on his shoulder and a hand above his heart. He simply makes a note of how the shampoo he bought her smells of coconut and vanilla, and then he drifts off.

...

She never quite announces that she's ready to venture outside. One day she's simply _there_, pulling one of his coats on as he readies himself to leave. He hands her a scarf, and she accepts it with such a look of determination that he doesn't realize he's grinning until they pass a window down on the street and he catches his own reflection.

These are the only times she gets out of the apartment; when Mohinder isn't driving a cab or sleeping, and she gets to tag along on expeditions of finding the people on the Map, or at least help collect more information that he deems necessary for his research.

...

Four weeks and two days, and he finally has a day off. It's past eleven o'clock when he finally awakens, and to his surprise she's still beside him, sheets snug around her body, hand on heart, head on shoulder, eyes studying him through thick lashes. As soon as he draws breath, she stirs and moves away; rolls out of bed and walks into the kitchen.

It's too early, and Mohinder's too groggy and the slamming pots and pans make it hard to get a good grasp of has what just happened.

...

His father's ashes are still in an urn on the table. Claire touches it reverently at times as she passes it by, eyes taking in the Map and the papers littering the desk and finally Mohinder himself, seated by the computer, re-reading his father's essays. He looks up, and there are words on her lips, but she never speaks them out loud.

He has sent after his father's home computer. It takes less than two weeks for it to arrive from India, and now, when he sets it up, the same strange program as is running on his father's laptop comes to life. It's a way to find them, he tells Claire, but he doesn't know how to decipher the code. The looks she gives him tells him that no matter what, she believes he will solve it eventually.

...

He reads until late into the night, and she sleeps sounds in the bed, golden hair covering the pillow like rays of sunshine. For the first time in weeks he doesn't join her – this is leading somewhere he's not quite certain he can go – and chooses the couch.

He wakes up with a stiff neck and an aching back, and Claire avoids his eyes at the breakfast table. He is not certain he made the right decision.

...

Eden lets herself into the apartment five weeks after Claire first arrived. Mohinder makes awkward first introductions, and tells himself he is imagining things as Eden's face clouds over before appearing smoothly neutral towards the blonde.

'I was called away,' Eden says as an explanation for not being around for so long, and Mohinder finally notices the lines in her face that were not there before, and how her shoulders seem to be carrying the weight of many sins.

Claire only tells of what has brought her to him after he insists that Eden is trustworthy, and even then she does not tell much. 'It must have cost your father considerably to do what he did,' Eden says as Mohinder stands by silently, listening to her speak as if stating a fact. 'He loves you a great deal. You should never forget that.'

When she leaves, she presses the keys to the apartment into Mohinder's hands and tells him goodbye. By the next day, he watches through the windows as a large, black car pulls up to the curb and men in dark clothes help her load boxes into the back of it.

Before she gets into the passenger seat, as one of the men slams the back doors closed, Eden looks up towards his window and smiles a peculiar smile. Just as if they were sharing a secret that no one else knew.

...

Claire stays on her side of the bed from now on.

He finds he misses the weight of her hand on his chest, as well as being lulled to sleep by the scent of coconuts and vanilla. He tells himself he shouldn't.

The dreams come now, showing him things he does not understand nor remember.

...

Five and a half weeks, and upon returning from a short trip to the store he finds Peter Petrelli laughing with Claire over coffee. A quick second there's a snarling, black thing in his chest, and then it's gone, and Peter turns to him and tells him he can _fly_. Only, not at the moment.

Claire looks smitten by the thought of it all, and the black thing once again makes a brief appearance, breathing smoke and wishing desperately – against all Mohinder's wishes – that none of it were true. But Peter claims to know of someone else as well, and he allows himself to be dragged out of the apartment once again, leaving Claire curled up on the couch, immersed in _Activating Evolution_.

Isaac Mendez is a dead end, and Peter tries to make him forget it by claiming to have received a visit from the future. By the time he gets home, he is at his wit's end; he sinks down on the couch and doesn't protest as Claire scoots close and wraps her arms around his shoulders.

He inhales, and there's nothing but the two of them.

...

For the first time in a long while, she is waiting up for him when he returns from his shift. He stretches out on top of the covers as he always does, and she snakes her arm around him – doesn't stop her hand to rest on his chest, but rolls close and _clings_ and it takes a long time for his heart rate to slow and allow him to rest.

He dreams of home, of India and his family, and a sister that doesn't exist.

...

It plagues him. He cannot get the image of his father holding a small, baby girl out of his mind, and it's Claire that gently suggests that maybe he should call his mother.

He does, and his world is suddenly turned on end – nothing has ever been as it seems. He says the name out loud – Shanti – in an effort to make it real, and Claire leaves his side and disappears from the kitchen.

It's later, as he hangs up the phone and aimlessly follows her, that she shows him the laptop and how the indecipherable symbols have morphed and produced a list. He should have known that the key to it all was what had gotten his father drawn into this business to begin with.

Claire makes him sit down in front of the laptop and gently rests her chin on his shoulder. They go through the list together, he not looking for anything special (it's only an added bonus as Peter, his brother, _and_ Isaac Mendez scroll by), she searching for anything familiar.

...

Her birth parents, he realizes later in the dark, as she slips in close and breathes against his skin; she tastes as good as she smells, and in the twilight her skin seems alabaster next to his.

It's awkward and over fast, no matter how long he wishes it'd last, and before sleep claims him he makes sure to pull her close, whole body trembling against the length of his as her fingernails comb through his hair and the top of her head fits perfectly tucked beneath his chin.

He dreams of fire and brimstone and a child's fingers wrapped gently around his own, golden hair spilling over a pillow like sunbeams across sky.


End file.
